


Cleansed

by PositivelyVexed



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Period-Typical Racism, Scars, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 04:00:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16400918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PositivelyVexed/pseuds/PositivelyVexed
Summary: Shaw asks to Ben to accompany him on a case.





	Cleansed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sadlikeknives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/gifts).



> This is set roughly after _Dead Water_ , in an alternate universe where Ben and Rose never got together. Contains some specific spoilers for _Wet Grave._

Shaw had turned up on his doorstep a little after breakfast, looking worn and tired. “Sorry to trouble you, but I s'pose by now you heard about what happened to Jean-Baptiste Bouton."

"Only that he was murdered on his own plantation. And that the police think it was a slave rebellion."

"That's the official word, though I got my doubts about that. They're all missing, that's all anyone knows for sure. I could use your help seeing if anyone in town knows more than they're letting on, Maestro.”

A part of him wanted to refuse. To say he'd done enough lately. He had been looking forward to a quiet season in New Orleans, after his adventure aboard a sternwheeler with Rose and Hannibal had finally come to a close. His recent adventures in Mexico and on the Mississipi had been exhausting, and more than anything else, he was ready for peace and quiet and simple routines, visiting Rose at her new school, people-watching with Hannibal at the balls and parties of the Creole elite. His thoughts did not involve tramping after Shaw in search of murderers who had done god knew what to their terrified captives.

But the thought of them being stolen away from the only home they’d ever known and split up, sent away to the cane fields January still remembered with a shudder, meant he couldn’t turn away. Then there was Shaw. Shaw probably didn't want to go investigating the case either, especially when a perfectly good scapegoat had presented itself to the police, and satisfied the rest of them. But Shaw was looking into it anyway, and he was asking for January’s help. January sighed, and agreed. 

It was a mystery that was quickly unraveled with January's questioning, though he realized Shaw would have never gotten the answers he had. But it only took a little investigating, and some friendly drinking with the slaves in the Boisvert kitchen after the latest gala to learn what the white police of New Orleans apparently had not discovered yet: that kidnappers were working the city again, as they had that summer of the cholera epidemic. This time they were targeting not just freedmen, but the slaves of the smaller, more isolated Creole properties, which was exactly what the Bouton property was, stealing one or two at a time, who'd be written off as runaways. The murder of Bouton and the kidnapping of all his slaves was bolder, and perhaps not the original plan, but it matched the behavior of the kidnappers in all other particulars. They'd be transporting them over land, to cover their tracks further. Old Averill, who slept out in the woods most weeks, had seen them. The kidnappers had a head start, but land transport of that many people was slow. He and Shaw had a chance of catching up with them, if they moved quickly.

Shaw looked at him with a glimmer of amazement when January got done telling him all that. "Maestro, how do you feel about accompanying me out into the woods?"

He sighed. He still wanted to say no, but his conscience wouldn't allow him to turn away now.

It took them three days to find the kidnapped slaves.

They’d been deep in the woods, near the ciprière when they’d found the cart Averill had seen. It was stopped for the night, and guarded only by one man, while the others, presumably, slipped into town and drank. 

Shaw leaned in close to January. “Let me take care of him. We best do this quietly.” As he spoke, he drew out a hunting knife. January nodded, feeling the weight, once again, of the pistol he carried inside of his jacket. The pistol he could be horsewhipped for carrying.

"And I ain’t going to have time to look at that cart while I’m dealing with this fella. You let me know if the slaves are still there, or if we’re too late, won’t you, Maestro?”

He could see a few heads visible through the opening from here, and was sure Shaw could as well. Still, he understood what Shaw was really saying, and felt a stab of relief. He played along. “I don't see anyone. I think they've been sold already. I don't think I'll find anything but empty shackles in there.”

Shaw nodded, slowly. “Can’t be helped, I suppose.”

When Shaw slipped across the clearing to deal with the guard, January slipped into the cart, which was dressed to look like a tinker’s wagon to hide the nine soul shoved shamefully close together, chained together by a long chain linking one wrist on each of them. Nine pairs of wide, wary eyes turned to him as he appeared. “I’m here to help,” he said softly, pulling out a pin and beginning to pick the lock on the chains. “You’ll need to run after you get free.”

The closest of the nine, an old woman, looked at him warily. “You’re telling us to just go?"

"If you want a chance to escape, yes."

"I saw you through the trees out there. You're working with a white man. And you're telling us to run.” 

January started to pick the first lock. “You don’t have to worry about him. He’s… a friend, and he’s looking the other way. But you’ll need to go now if you want to get out.”

The woman shook her head at him, almost pityingly. “Where are we supposed to go?”

He thought, feeling painfully inadequate, then remembered something from one of the other times he had been in this part of the woods, “There’s a village in these woods, run by a one-armed man named Cut-Arm. Everyone there is an ecaped slaves. There’s a colored man named Lucius Lacrîme, lives in a fishing shack about five miles downriver from here. He can lead you to them.” It had been years since he'd seen Cut-Arm, but Olympe had told him the village still stood, still evaded white eyes, its runaways still slipping into the square to dance with the voodooienne some nights. If it could survive, against all odds, he had some faith that they too could survive, and find their way there.

“How do you know there’s such a place?”

“I’ve been there. I've seen it with my own eyes.”

He helped them up and get into the woods. The last to leave the cart was the old woman, and she looked at him, shaking her head like he was a vision she couldn’t make sense of, and smiled at him. “Thank you,” she said, before slipping away.

Only then did he turn back to Shaw, who was sitting on the ground, wiping blood and a string of hair out of his face. “Tried to take him alive, but he gave me a mite more trouble than I expected.”

January looked at the dead man, lying on the ground with his throat slit, to the black oaks beyond, where he could see the last straggling member of the group disappear into the woods. 

“Wasn’t very helpful with information either,” Shaw added. “I’m sure hoping you had better luck picking clues out of the back of that wagon than I did out of him.”

“I think I got enough for us to go on,” said January, who had gotten a great deal more than that from speaking with the slaves as he helped them rub feeling back into their arms and legs. They had told him a great deal about the kidnappers. But as with so many things, he wasn’t sure he could just say as much to Shaw. There was that curious dance of deniability they had to do, the pretense that even after all they had been through they were, still only a law-abiding free man of color, one who did not aid runaways or carry weapons, and a white policeman who certainly never saw him do otherwise.

That was when the rest of the bandits, all Kaintucks, all dirty and sour-smelling and armed to the teeth, returned to camp, and the scene descended into a chaos of bullets and shouts. One of the men got close enough to swing a hunting knife at January before January discharged his pistol into the man’s face and slipped between the trees after Shaw.

They ran.

His side burned, pain shooting through his ribs with each step. It only gradually occurred to him that the knife the Kaintuck had swung at him had cut him, that blood was leaking down his shirt. His only guide through these parts of the woods was Shaw, and he was struggling to keep pace with him. He kept moving, because the deeper they led the slavers into the woods, the more time the others would have to escape.

He struggled to remember the woodcraft of his youth, but Shaw seemingly knew his way through the ciprière, wholly in his element here in the wild. Beside a half-submerged fallen tree, Shaw stopped and fell to a crouch, grey eyes shining into the dark. January didn’t need to think, he dropped with Shaw as a matter of instinct, and he heard a bullet take a wet chunk out of the tree behind him. 

Shaw handed the rifle to him, and he felt his own hands going through the motion of reloading the rifle for Shaw.

They heard splashing feet coming toward them, and stopped, about twenty feet away. Rough voices spoke in English.

One of them was swearing colorfully and loudly. “I seen him around New Orleans before, the ugly sonofabitch. He’s with the Guards. What he’s doing with that black buck, I sure as shit don’t know.” 

“I’ve seen them walking around town before, looking close as kin.”

“Close as _something_ , anyway.” A sharp squall of crude laughter followed, and he guessed, from the nasty peal that followed, a gesture had been made of some sort. He felt his face heating with a kind of inchoate fury.

He could feel his shirt soaking through with blood from the knife. Beside him, Shaw was still, a strange expression on his face.

“Shut it, Silas,” one low voice snapped. “I want to kill them, not talk about them.”

But the louder, drunker voice continued. “I ain’t just saying that either—he's like that, the guard. I've seen him down in the Swamp, seen him-”

But what, if anything, Silas had seen Shaw doing, he never learned, because that was when Shaw signaled, and they rose, rifle and pistol in Shaw’s hand, and the pistol in January’s hand. They heard three splashes in the water a moment later.

Shaw relaxed, straightening up. “That makes all of them, by my count.” His voice had a distant, distracted quality to it. “Obliged for your help, Maestro.”

Then he held out a hand to help January up. January took it and let himself be hauled up, trying not to give away how much just standing hurt. “If you don’t mind my sayin’ so, you’re favorin’ your side a bit there.”

“One of them swung a knife at me and I didn’t dodge fast enough. I don’t think it’s deep, though. Just a slash across the ribs. I’ll live.” There were maybe men who would taken that as empty braggadacio, but Shaw just nodded, though there was concern in those gray eyes too. They had been in too many fights together not to know what the other man could survive, and that each man knew what he could survive, and Shaw seemed to trust his assessment on this. He nodded, that same distracted look in his eye. January wanted to say something—to tell him it didn’t matter, what they’d just overheard. He didn’t know how to begin to say it, though.

“There’s an old huntin’ shack a couple miles from here along the river,” Shaw said. “Think you can make it?”

“I don’t think I have much of a choice,” he smiled weakly.

The cat paths they followed were narrower than the width of their shoulders in some parts, but Shaw seemed to know his way. They slid through the dark together silently. It was well after midnight by now, and mist was rising from the water and settling around them. It was the early morning hours, and the heaviness of humidity and heat were lifted. After the turmoil of the last few days, he felt a kind of peace, even with the pain in his side, but he found himself worrying about Shaw all the same. Out here, in the wild, rifles slung over his shoulder, he moved through the woods with a kind of grace that January only caught glimpses of in times like these. The lazy, awkward posture he so often struck in New Orleans cast aside like the costume it was. Was it true, he wondered, what Silas had said? It had never occurred to him that anyone could imagine his friendship with the white policeman in that light, and it shocked him to hear it. And yet there had been the way Shaw had looked at him for a moment. Shaken to his core and-

Like he’d been found out.

He couldn’t square the thought with what he knew of Shaw. He remembered at their very first meeting Shaw had told him he’d been in love with a girl at sixteen. Though it didn’t preclude Shaw having interests in other directions, he supposed. And it really wasn’t his business anyway. He drew up beside Shaw, and saw Shaw’s shoulder stiffen, his lanky frame still against the night sky. 

“You meanin’ to ask me somethin’, Maestro?” he asked, with weary forebearance, like he read the thoughts going through January’s mind.

“No. What they said back there, it’s none of my business. Anyway, men like that aren’t worth listening to,” he paused, remembering he was still talking to a white man, and a Kaintuck keelboater at that, and added, “If you don’t mind my saying so.”

The muscles around Shaw’s jaw worked for a moment, like he was trying to decide whether to grimace or smile, then chose the latter. “No, I don’t mind your sayin’ so at all.”

He smiled back.

At that moment, a dark structure loomed through the trees. They had found Shaw’s shack. “It’s not much to look at, but I’ve bedded down here more’n once when I got caught in a downpour,” Shaw said. “And I’ve boarded in less comfort’ble places for a good spell.”

January suspected that said more about the quality of housing in the New Orleans neighborhoods that rented to Kaintucks than about the shack, but all the same, he was deeply grateful for the shelter just now. There was even a well outside that spoke at least to the possibility of clean water. 

He made it all the way to the front door before he stumbled, and Shaw caught his shoulder. “I think we need to get you patched up, pronto, maestro.”

“That’s not necessary,” he protested, vaguely embarrassed. But all the same, he didn’t object, when Shaw, with a care and gentleness that surprised him, steered him in the direction of the bed, his open hand warm and firm on his back. He could count on one hand the number of times Shaw had touched him, and it surprised him every time. 

The most vivid of them had been the time, after the murder of his young friend Artois, when Shaw had pulled him into an inelegant, but heartfelt, hug. He still remembered the moment, the grief and anger threatening to blind him--but also the way that the embrace had momentarily shocked him out of his private hell, the way it had revealed a depth of feeling for him that was startling to discover.

Shaw had touched him during the same case, or rather, afterward. After the hurricane waters had retreated and they were back in New Orleans, speaking at one of the market stalls, Shaw had asked him about Rose. Maybe it was the loneliness of missing Hannibal, and his freshly broken heart, but January had found himself telling Shaw everything, there in the market stall. How Rose had told him, as gently as she could, that she did not feel for him what he felt for her, that she could only ever offer him friendship. Shaw had listened closely, then clenched his shoulder for a moment, the lightness of the touch and the understanding in his eyes, striking him more, in that moment, than the fact that Shaw had reached out to him in the middle of the market. “She’s a fine woman. Friendship with her’s still worth a hell of a lot.” He had nodded. That much was certainly true.

He wasn’t sure why he was thinking of all of that, as he lowered himself onto the bed carefully, feeling the throbbing pain in his side.

“I can do the stitches myself, if you’ll hand me my bag,” he said, his voice thinned out to a trickle in his throat. The rucksack January had been carrying contained several contents of his doctor’s bag, a decision he’d made after all the other adventures he’d gone on where he’d wished he’d had it. He’d expected he’d need to make use his supplies on one of the runaways, or on Shaw, but it seemed the only person he’d be using them on tonight was himself.

January began to unbutton his shirt. But after unbuttoning his shirt, he found he couldn’t get it over his shoulder without pain shooting through his ribs.

“If’n you don’t mind, Maestro,” Shaw said casually, “I can help with that.”

He sighed. “I’d be grateful.” 

He felt Shaw’s long fingers brush against his shoulder as he helped him work his shirt off. After that, he felt his heart sink as he saw exactly where the cut was, and how much blood there was. Shaw shook his head. “I know you’re the surgeon, and I ain’t fixin to call your skills in question, but I don’t think that’s a good angle for a man to perform on himself.”

It wasn’t. With his shirt off, there was no denying that. It was edging closer towards his back than he was comfortable with, a bad angle to reach or get a good view.

“I’ve got some experience in stitching, Maestro,” Shaw said. “If you’ll permit me.”

He realized it would have to be done. Putting this off until they got back, whenever that would be, was out of the question. He nodded wearily. Still, he was alert enough to have a healthy wariness about Shaw touching his wounds.

“Would you do something for me first?”

“Anything,” Shaw said, not even waiting to be told what it was.

“Can you… wash up?”

Shaw’s gaze turned appraising, as if sizing up if he were playing a joke. “I suppose you’re the surgeon,” he said dubiously. “You know your business.”

“It’s a habit I picked up in Paris. I’ve noticed it seems to make a difference in the number of patients who… die.”

Shaw registered this news with obvious surprise, but he seemed to be giving it more careful consideration than many physicians January had known. “That sure seems like reason enough to do it, then,” he said. 

He stepped out of the shack, and when he returned, it was with a bucket of clean water. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing slender arms with ropey sinews that shifted in the lantern light. Even in this low lighting, he could make out the cross-hatching of scars that ran along his skin. His wariness about making requests from white men must have been lowered by blood loss, because he ventured to say, “Soap too?” Shaw nodded gravely, and picked the brown lump of soap that lay by the pan. He was methodical as he washed his scarred forearms, lathering up to his elbows in fits and starts, as if not quite sure where to stop. When he was done, his forearms and hands gleaming and pale in the lantern light, he took up the needle and a washcloth and knelt beside him. “Would it count as helpful if I washed you too?”

Shaw was a quick study, he thought, and might have made a good surgeon’s assistant, strange as that was to think of. “Yes, it would help. The cleaner the equipment and the patient, the better it seems to go, in my experience.”

Shaw nodded, wetting one of the washclothes from January’s bag. As Shaw bathed him, January found himself wondering about Shaw’s history. Who he might have been visiting down in the Swamp—and with who. He caught himself trying to see it in Shaw’s face, what a man might find attractive there. He did have an uncanny strength about him, a control over his body that was probably appealing—a strong jaw and cool grey eyes that—he could, he realized with dismay, see the appeal of. Shaw caught him looking and he looked away, embarrassed. It was a wholly inappropriate line of thought, and not at all the sort of thing he normally considered. But all the same, the curiosity, once planted, seemed to grow in his chest.

 _It really isn’t any of your business,_ he reminded himself.

Shaw unspooled a length of thread, then bit it off, easy as if he were Dominique or Livia in the drawing room, working on their sewing. Or Ayasha, he thought with a clench of his heart. “I can’t say as I’ve done this part before, but the stitching I’ve done my share of. Not as much as you, no doubt, but I’ve sown myself back together enough times. Probably not what my Ma had in mind when she taught me to sew, but there we go.”

“I trust you,” he said, and realized he meant it. It was a trust that sometimes came paired with resentment—knowing that the good intentions of one white policeman might be the only thing that stood between him and being thrown in the Cabildo, or sold into slavery, for good. But he did trust him, just the same, even though there was always a voice telling him not to, that only fools got their hopes up around Americans. It would be easier, in some ways, not to trust Shaw. If he never lowered his defenses-

He winced a bit as the needle went in, but Shaw had a steady hand. January turned his face to watch him work. He had not doubted that Shaw had experience in stitching himself up (he had seen the patchwork of scars on his torso too many times to doubt that), but working on someone else was another matter. Still, his stitches were neat and even.

Clever fingers, he thought. Fingers that knew their way around traps and snares and knives, touching him gently and pulling him back together. That might have surprised someone else, but not January. He knew that you had to have some aptitude for both things to make a good surgeon.

Shaw tied them off, then cut the thread. “That done to your satisfaction, maestro?”

“It is,” he said, looking over the neat row of stitches. “Thank you.”

Shaw nodded, lips pressed thin. Now that he didn’t have a task in front of him, he seemed suddenly wrung out. Sometimes it was hard to remember Shaw was as young as he was--he looked like he’d been carrying the world on his narrow shoulders for as long as January had. He heaved himself down beside him on the bed, and Ben found that he did not mind. Not long after, exhaustion claimed him, and he fell asleep. 

When he opened his eyes again, the clouds had cleared and moonlight poured through the window. He sat up, his whole body aching. He turned his head to examine his wound, and was relieved to see that the wound wasn’t as inflamed as he had feared. It was too early to assume he was safe, but the absence of any of the tell-tale signs of infection was some reassurance. 

He heard the splashing of water outside, and became aware that Shaw wasn’t beside him. He raised himself to a sitting position and looked out the window. Shaw was there, standing next to the well, stripped to the waist, scrubbing himself with soap and water in the pre-dawn cold. It was so unexpected he stared for a moment, wondering if it was a trick of the moonlight. Shaw always seemed to regard his body as just another weapon, although that was probably a less than apt comparison, since he had seen the way the man cared for his weapons, and it far surpassed the care he showed for himself. 

But no, Shaw was out there among the fireflies and the black oak heavy with Spanish moss, bathing. If it was his theory about the health benefits of hygiene that had done it, then he wished he had shared it ages ago. 

When Shaw came back, clothes and hair soaking wet from washing, he looked different. He saw January looking at him from the bed, and shrugged a bit sheepishly. For the first time, his hair looked less like colorless ditchwater, and more like an ordinary brown. 

“Thought I might change the dressin’ on your wounds come morning, so I might as well fully scrub down. Didn’t know if it’d make a difference….”

“It can’t hurt,” he said, strangely touched that Shaw had taken what he said to heart. “I should warn you, though, I may well sleep through to tomorrow night, I’m so tired, so you may as well change them now.”

Shaw nodded. This time, as he sat up and let him change the dressing, he was in less pain, and perhaps that was why as Shaw changed the bandages, touching his ribs gently to make sure they weren’t broken, he felt his stomach flutter. There were those strangely comforting hands again against his stomach, roughly calloused but warm and welcome. He realized, with sudden horror, that his body was visibly responding to the touch.

“Don’t,” he said. 

Shaw stopped, pulled his hands away like he’d been burned. “Apologies, Maestro.”

“No, it’s not-” He swallowed. He thought that the wisest course of action would be to leave the conversation there. Leave this, whatever it was, these confusing stirrings, buried. As one had to bury so many things, just to survive in New Orleans. He was suddenly very tired. Tired of New Orleans and the whole United States and of constantly feeling he was walking a tightrope, always on the edge of calamity. He looked up, and saw Shaw’s eyes on him, wistful and a bit sad. He heard himself falteringly say, “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just been a long time.” 

“Oh,” said Shaw. That startled look in his eyes returned. “Oh.” He sat back on the bed, his eyebrows knitted together, like he was searching for words. “Confidentially,” he said at last. “It’s been a long time for me too. That fella who saw me wasn’t wrong about what I went to that part of the Swamp lookin' for, although I didn’t end up getting it.” Shaw spoke carefully, not looking at him. 

It did not escape him that Shaw was taking a great risk here too, revealing that much of himself to him. But then, Shaw had always trusted him. He felt the burn on his skin where Shaw’s fingertips had brushed against him, feeling sudden, inexplicable want leaping up.

They sat beside each other, two men worlds apart from each other, so close they could touch.

He found he wanted to cross that distance.

Are you crazy? a sharp voice that sounded like his mother whispered in his ear. That animal? A man? And really, Ben, an _American_?

But his mother, and the voice in his head, didn’t seem to understand the puzzling currents of desire, and how they flowed in unexpected directions. He knew what he was contemplating was unthinkable in New Orleans. And yet. _I am not in New Orleans tonight,_ he thought. This far from civilization, it was like being stripped bare and cleansed. He thought of Cut-Arm’s village of escaped slaves. When he had first laid eyes on it years ago he had thought that it was doomed. Yet it was still here, for now, and new people were finding their way there even now. A little pocket of freedom and happiness people had carved out for themselves, in the face of impossible odds. And he had been alone a long time. 

Shaw seemed to be undergoing his own internal calculation, his body held in a line of tension. 

He closed the distance between them before he had a chance to think better of it. Shaw froze for a moment, then relaxed into it. It was the most surprising kiss he had ever shared, not least because Shaw was skilled in this too. They broke apart.

He laid back on the bed, and he felt the warmth of Shaw’s body as it came to stretch out beside him. Shaw reached over and grasped his hand tightly, all in one motion. He pulled, and was gratified that Shaw came toward him. Their bodies pressed together. He didn’t know if Shaw had ever done this before, but he hadn’t. Heat was baking off him in waves, a welcome sensation in the cold pre-dawn air. January breathed deep, feeling his light chest up against him. He felt an ache of frustration shoot through him. His injuries were still so raw he couldn’t do much of anything else. 

“Lay back,” Shaw said softly. 

“I can’t ask you-”

“It wouldn’t exactly be an imposition, Maestro.”

“Then I want you to.”

Shaw slid down to his waist. He could hear Shaw’s breath thinning out as he worked the buttons of his trousers, and it sent another shot of desire through him. When he opened the flap of his trousers and bowed his head, January sighed. What followed was heat and pleasure and welcome, wanted relief. He lay back against the bed, frustrated he couldn’t do more, and well aware that he wanted to do more. A fact that he was making very self-evident to Shaw at the moment. They didn’t speak when he finished, or even when Shaw climbed up beside him and lay himself down carefully, making sure to lie on his uninjured side. January’s hand skirted over to his, and Shaw clasped it tightly. 

There would be questions to be faced in the morning. After they got back, and Shaw had to explain to his superiors that the had found the kidnappers, but the slaves had disappeared without a trace, and January’s wounds were healed, he could invite Shaw into his house, and they could make sense of what this was between them, and where they could go from here. 

He fell asleep with Shaw’s fingers held loosely in his hand, the whirring of cicadas and the slow rustle of the tree branches the only sound they could hear.


End file.
